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The French alphabet is based on the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, uppercase and lowercase, with a 5 diacritics and 2 orthographic ligatures.

Letter names

This article is part of the series on: French language

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Letter	Name
A	/ɑ/
B	/be/
C	/se/
D	/de/
E	/ø/
F	/ɛf/
G	/ʒe/
H	/aʃ/
I	/i/
J	/ʒi/
K	/ka/
L	/ɛl/
M	/ɛm/
N	/ɛn/
O	/o/
P	/pe/
Q	/ky/
R	/ɛʁ/
S	/ɛs/
T	/te/
U	/y/
V	/ve/
W	/dubləve/ "double v"
X	/iks/
Y	/igrɛk/ "i grec"
Z	/zɛd/

La nouvelle épellation

In the nouvelle épellation system, the consonant letters were read as follows: be, ke, de, fe, gue, he, je, ke, le, me, ne, pe, ke, re, se, te, ve, we, kse, ze. Though more phonetically based than the traditional system, it never took hold.^[1]

Diacritics

Usual diacritic marks are acute ( ´ ), grave ( ` ), circumflex ( ˆ ), diaeresis (called tréma in French) ( ¨ ), and the cedilla ( ¸ ). The main combinations are: à â ç é è ê ë î ï ô û ù ü ÿ. Diacritics have no impact on the primary alphabetical order.

the tilde diacritical mark ( ˜ ), used only above n, is occasionally used with the French alphabet, for well-known names of Spanish origin that have been incorporated in the language (cañon, El Niño, ...). Like the other diacritics, the tilde has no impact on the primary alphabetical order.

Diacritics are often omitted on capital letters, mainly for technical reasons and it is widely believed that they are not required. However both the Académie française and the Office québécois de la langue française reject this usage and confirm that "in French, the accent has full orthographic value"^[2], except for acronyms but not for abbreviations (e.g. CEE, ALENA, but É.-U.)^[3].

Ligatures

The following two ligatures have orthographic value:

• œ (e dans l'o or o, e collés/liés): e.g. œil, fœtus, bœuf (vs. moelle, coexister, minoen^[4])
• æ (e dans l'a or a, e collés/liés): e.g. tænia, ex æquo (vs. maestro, paella^[5])

For determining alphabetical order, these ligatures are treated like the sequences oe and ae.

Notes

• 'W' and 'K' are rarely used except in loan words or regional words, 'ou' is used to represent the /w/ sound; while 'Q' appears more frequently than in English.
• vowels are A, E, I, O, U, Y;
• semi-vowels are Y, rarely W (except regionally, for instance in Belgium);

See also

• Alphabets derived from the Latin
• French orthography

References

External links

• Recording of 3 different voices pronouncing the French alphabet
• Online editor for typing French accents